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Want to retire with a lot of cash? All of us want that, but not all of us achieve that. In order to set yourself up to retire with a lot of cash, you need a proactive retirement plan and strategy to help guide you.

In this article, six steps to retire with a lot of cash will be examined: needs and wants; government benefits; pensions and retirement plans; diversification; starting young; and short-term sacrifice for long-term gain.

Planning for Your Retirement Needs and Wants:

In order to retire with lots of cash, you need to examine your needs and wants, and plan accordingly.

For your needs, make sure to include things like costs for housing, food, clothing, and healthcare. The bare minimum things needed to survive during your retirement.

For your wants, include entertainment, travel, costs of participating in your retirement goals, whatever they may be.

When calculating this, make sure that you keep inflation and increases in the costs of certain services over inflation in mind (a valuable calculator is available at the AARP website). If not, you may find yourself sorely short of the funding you need.

Government Benefits:

When planning for retirement, make sure to include the value of Social Security and Medicare benefits into your retirement plan (a calculator can be found on the Social Security website). While there is currently a lot of pessimism towards to future of the programs, they have not gone anywhere yet.

Pensions and Retirement Plans:

If you are one of the lucky few that has a pension plan, make sure to include that in your plan. One of the benefits of a pension plan compared to the more common contribution plans is that the pension plan payments are often adjusted for inflation.

If you are utilizing retirement plans make sure to maximize your contributions to them whenever possible. The contributions to them are often tax-deferred so you get the benefit of lowering your yearly income-tax liability while contributing. Retirement plans also commonly include some kind of employer match, which also gives you free money from your employer if you are not maximizing your contributions.

Diversification:

Regardless of your situation, do not keep the bulk of your investments in just one thing. Invest in a variety of different fund types across different risk levels. This will allow you to hedge against major losses in one sector of the economy.

A good way to diversify your investments is through the use of mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs). When you invest in these, you can select funds that are diversified which reduce the need for further diversification.

Starting Young:

Start saving for retirement while you are still young. Since retirement accounts work by re-investing the money gained from the accounts over the years, investing young allows interest to compile on itself over decades instead of trying to save all of the money in your 50s and 60s.

Short-Term Sacrifice For Long-Term Gain:

Many times retirement saving is not fun. It is taking money out of your pocket that you would otherwise be able to utilize now. However, if you can make small sacrifices while you are saving, the benefits will be great when you retire and have a level of financial freedom that allows you to do what you want.

Conclusion:

While not guaranteed, if you follow the steps outlined in this article, you will be on your way to being able to retire with lots of cash.

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